The Picture
by lifeluver
Summary: You look...different." Robin reflects on the events of season 5.


It started with a picture.

It was a Wednesday morning and Robin was hungover from the night before. She, Marshall and Lily had spent the night at MacLaren's arguing over the merits of the Twilight Saga (three guesses which side Marshall came down on) and drinking the night away. She had hoped Barney might show up, because he would surely be on her side, but he had disappeared on a three day sex bender while Ted cheered him on from the sidelines.

Just another normal week.

So when Don strolled past her desk that morning, his stupid combat boots stomping on the ugly tiles in her office she was not in the mood to be flirted with.

"Look, Don, I'm kind of busy right now, so if you could save your sleazy pick up lines for another day, that'd be great," she said in that dismissive yet cocky voice she'd acquired over the past few months.

But Don didn't leave. Instead, he barely acknowledged her words, choosing to focus on a picture on her desk. Clucking her tongue impatiently in the way her mother used to do and she had always despised, Robin watched him, waiting for the lame come-on.

Wow, I thought you were an angel in the photo, but my God you're even more beautiful in person...

A picture could never do your body justice, baby...

"So these are your friends?" Don asked in an stilted, almost earnest voice. That was not what Robin had been expecting. She leaned over her desk to look at the picture in question, and it was indeed of her and the gang at MacLarens, celebrating their $1000 bottle of wine.

"Yup, thats them," she said, wondering where he could be going with this.

Don continued to look at the photo, brow furrowed with a slight frown gracing his face.

"You look...different." On that cryptic note Don walked away, undoubtedly to annoy some other coworker, leaving a confused Robin in his wake. She waited until he was out of sight, then snatched up the photo.

She studied it as intensely as Don had before her, examining her face, looking for tiny imperfections but coming up short. Sure, she looked a bit thinner, but she'd been a bit stressed out lately, and it's not like she couldn't lose the tiny amount in no time at all anyway.

With an exasperated sigh, Robin tossed the frame back on her desk haphazardly and pushed Don out of her mind.

xxxXXXxxx

That night, she didn't go to the bar.

She went straight home and poured herself a large glass of wine and cuddled on the couch to watch old episodes of Oprah on her TiVo.

For a brief moment she considered calling someone to cheer her up, but quickly discarded it. Lily would want to talk about what was bothering her and she really had no idea what was the problem. Marshall would bring Lily and then they would team up on her. Ted would surely find a way to turn the conversation back towards himself, and Barney...

Well, Barney was out on a sex bender anyway.

So Robin pulled a blanket over her and watched Oprah give away prizes to her audience and tried to forget that once upon a time, she would've been comfortable calling every one of her friends to ask for help.

xxxXXXxxx

For the next week Robin felt off. She tried her best to hide it though; heading down to the bar, forcing herself to go on a blind date with some guy named Dale, encouraging Barney's exploits. And all the while, ignoring the nagging feeling in the back of her mind, that stupid voice in her head that says she's faking.

She's gotten quite good at faking, she figures.

She faked being over Ted when she came back from Argentina. She faked being okay with him dating, and him falling in love, and him being engaged. She faked sadness when Stella left him, faked sympathy for his romantic problems, and faked excitement for his new prospects.

She faked not knowing that Barney was in love with her. She faked being oblivious, she faked being indifferent. She faked being in love with him almost as well as she faked not being in love with him.

And now she faked friendship. She faked their "reunion as friends," because it was what the rest of the group needed. They couldn't know about the silent moments when they were alone, or how cruelly the casually tossed barbs in either direction were intended.

She kept faking, so that their group could maintain the status quo, and she was quite good at it.

In fact, by now it barely even bothered her that the only person who could tell when she was lying was too immersed in his own deception to notice.

But those nights when she was alone, when she had nothing to entertain her but her own circular thoughts, she was trapped in a prison of her own making. She was who she had made herself to be, but she had recreated herself so many times over the past few years, she was no longer sure what was real, or even what she wanted to be real.

And now she had a headache.

It was two o'clock in the morning, and Robin couldn't get those words out of her head. "You look...different."

Finally she threw her blanket off and stumbled into the living room, flipping on the light as she went. She searched the room before finally finding that photo, lying facedown on the coffee table.

She stared at it for a long time, hoping to come to some sort of epiphany.

There was nothing to see. She tried her best to remember the night it had been taken. They were all drinking their wine that didn't taste all that good and enjoying each others company.

She was cuddled up next to Barney and he was wearing an odd, macho face, posing for the camera. They had been happy then, she thought, still exploring their...thing, seeing where life would take them.

Lily and Marshall were on the other side, grinning ear to ear as they always did for photos. Lily had been sipping water though, and they were all teasing her about it. Evidently there had been a broken condom, and she'd been feeling sick, but it was all over a week later and they were more careful with their protection since.

Ted sat in the middle, as he always did, a smaller, more self-conscious smile on his face, looking like he was holding back from something.

She searched for a long time to see in her face what Don had seen, but there was nothing.

She hadn't changed.

In the midst of her thoughts, she barely heard the jiggling of keys on the other side of the door. With a loud crash and a mumbled curse, someone stumbled through the door. She started, dropping the picture on the ground and turned to see Barney standing awkwardly in the doorway.

"Hi," she said, avoiding eye contact.

"Uh, hey," he slurred, blinking to try and adjust to the light. "Ted said I could..."

"Yeah, no problem. I was just going to bed."

But she didn't move. She sat on the couch while Barney closed the door behind him and looked around the room.

"What's that?" he asked, gesturing at the the fallen frame.

"Oh, nothing," Robin mumbled as she bent over to pick it up. When she straightened he was standing next to her, looking at the picture in her hands. He too, stared at it for a long moment. Robin watched him closely for a reaction, secretly hoping he saw something she hadn't.

"That," he started slowly. "That seems like a long time ago." Robin nodded, and he was bent close over her shoulder, his breath on her neck. Suddenly, Barney jolted back and started moving towards the kitchen, muttering something about Red Bull and energy. Robin put the photo back on the coffee table and headed to bed, shaking off whatever foreign feeling overcame her.

xxxXXXxxx

It was two weeks later when she finally realized what was bothering her.

It was the middle of February, approximately 17 degrees in New York, and she was coming down to the bar when she saw an elderly man walk out of the bar, with a young blonde on his arm.

He must've been over fifty, but he was wearing a huge grin and the girl looked like she was the luckiest person in the world. At that moment she remembered Barney dressed up in the old man costume, with that incredible make up (seriously, how did he do that?) finding a way to grow old and never have to change.

She remembered vowing with Ted, Marshall, and Lily, that they would start their new lives. She remembered packing to go to Japan, and advance her career.

She remembered Ted getting ready to move to New Jersey and get married.

She remembered Marshall and Lily preparing to finally begin their lives in their new, grown-up apartment.

She remembered the promise to come back to that bar exactly one year later, and toast to themselves with expensive wine, to celebrate all the changes they'd made in their lives, yet still remaining friends.

She remembered all the talk, all the bravado, all the big words.

And yet when you look in that picture, the picture that she'd been obsessing over for weeks now, the one that she couldn't get out of her head, nothing had changed.

Lily and Marshall were still spending 90% of their time at Ted's apartment, living the way they had since they were eighteen years old, refusing to admit they were in a rut.

Ted was single, again, and had returned to his search for a wife, but this time, he was just sitting around, waiting for her to come to him.

She had come back from Japan after barely even one month in a new job, and was back in a new dead end job, where she had no chance of ever moving up.

The only thing that had changed in their lives was that she and Barney had been together when that photo was taken. Except, if you look closely, they really weren't. There was still a space between them, a hesitance, and distance, as though they wouldn't quite allow themselves to go all the way.

Robin Sherbatsky and Barney Stinson did not do anything half way.

Did they?

The wind whipped against her cheeks and Robin remembered being on the roof just a few months earlier, on the brink of something new and exciting. She remembered Ted being ready to become a teacher, to start a whole new career. She remembered Marshall and Lily once again committing themselves to starting grown up lives that they had avoided for so long. She remembered her, involved in a relationship she wasn't sure she was ready for, but was so excited she could hardly contain herself.

But here they were again. Nothing had changed, nothing would ever change. Because none of them were allowing themselves to grow up.

When they tried to grow up, bad things happened.

When she had allowed herself to open up and date Ted, she had gotten her heart broken.

When Ted proposed and made the leap into adulthood he had been left at the altar.

When Marshall and Lily had bought a new apartment they'd been saddled with credit card debt and an off-kilter floor.

When Barney had committed himself to Shannon, she'd destroyed his heart and humiliated him.

And now, after being beaten down by the world so many times they were unable to try again. She didn't look different in that photo, she just looked how she felt. Trapped, stuck in a moment, unable to move forward, only backwards. Sabotaging herself out of fear.

Robin looked into the bar through the hazy window and saw them sitting there, Ted, Marshall and Lily, around the table. Just like they always had, just like they always would. Suddenly Robin felt sick to her stomach and had to get away.

She was afraid to grow up.

But Robin Sherbatsky wasn't afraid of anything.

xxxXXXxxx

There was no dramatic statement made on air, no burning of bridges, no insulting of employers.

That next morning she quietly approached her boss and handed in her two weeks notice. She let her coworkers know, and took care to thank Don for being a good co-anchor, ignoring his confused expression.

There was no last second flight, no sneaking off in the middle of the night, no tear stained tickets.

That week she scoured the internet to find the cheapest ticket to Paris. She spoke to each of her friends individually, explaining that she had always wanted to travel, and promised she would come visit soon.

There was no blue french horn, no extreme declarations of love, no lying or faking each other out.

That night she said, "Come to Paris with me." It wasn't a statement, or a question. It was just a simple request, a request to try again, to try for real, to try it their way.

There was a long pause, and she allowed him to think.

Then he smiled softly, and said, "I'll have to bring some work with me."

She smiled back at him and realized that maybe, just maybe, he'd been waiting for her this whole time. And maybe, just maybe, they were ready.

Growing up, Sherbatsky-style.


End file.
